12 November (Part 2) - Bexley Council’s distasteful past
While the Government successfully
curtails my freedom of movement the site
upgrade can continue. Most photos are being re-provided at higher quality,
comment that looks in retrospect to be a little too unkind is being removed and a very few blogs quietly lost.
Over and over again I am struck by just how dishonest Bexley Council was back in
2012 and earlier. Some reports which may have made sense to those who followed developments
closely back then remain but are too complex for regurgitation now.
Police protecting assailants when they discover that he is the friend of the
investigating copper, parking fines so unjust that a Deputy Director sends the
victim a cheque in payment. A bit too complicated to pore over all over again but some
old blogs are much easier to understand.
In 2011 Bexley Council’s cupboard was so full of skeletons that my suspicion at
the time was that the only way they could ensure none escaped was to say nothing
about anything and answer no questions if at all possible. Many was the time
that the Council refused to comply with the Information Commissioner’s ruling.
They had tried false answers to questions to Full Council and planted questions
from supporters to waste the 15 minutes time allowed. They also tried not
answering questions at all and filibustering or simply losing them.
They hired bouncers for Council meetings to intimidate the public in case 27
police officers was not sufficient and they rejected the advice of the Under Secretary of State at the Department of Communities and
Local Government (Bob Neill, MP at that time) to open up meetings to “Citizen Journalists”.
And then they went for the big one. Change the
Constitution pertaining to questions.
• To prohibit questions deemed to be in any way similar to another asked within the last six months.
• Residents whose questions are accepted to have their personal details, name and address etc. published in the Agenda and on the Council’s website.
• Questions relating to staffing levels and salaries not to be permitted.
• The Mayor to ban any question or questioner that at any time he or she
has deemed disrespectful, the judgment being entirely the Mayor’s. (One had written to
a resident at his home address for being “parsimonious” with his applause at an awards ceremony.)
• If the questioner fails to attend the meeting his/her question to be rejected.
(Something subsequently ignored when the answer was favourable to the Council.
• If any question is accepted but rewarded with a non-answer or falsehood the questioner will not be allowed to raise a secondary question.
• Questions must be about policy and not procedural matters.
On 7th December 2012 the Mayor was Councillor Alan Downing. The following question was submitted to him…
Why do members of the public have to have their private addresses published in
the agenda for full Council meetings when asking a question, rather than checked
and verified as being correct, whereas councillors, many of whom do not show
their private addresses in the register of members interests, do not have their addresses published?
He rejected the question and his reason - verbatim - was…
Your question will not appear on the agenda for the next
Council meeting. This is because the Mayor does not consider it to be a policy
matter and is not therefore permissible under the Council’s agreed protocol.
The policy of not including Councillor’s home addresses in their Register of Interests but
insisting on publishing residents’ addresses was not a policy and could not be questioned.
Let that sink in. It mattered not to the Council that the questioner might, for all they knew,
be a lady taking refuge in a safe house. The policy disenfranchised her.
The Localism Act allows Councillors to withhold addresses from their Register of
Interests if they can convince
the Monitoring Officer that to do so would put their lives in danger. 15 such
permissions had been given in the whole of London,
eleven of them were in Bexley.
Eventually the Information Commissioner took an interest in Bexley’s malpractice and a dishonest Council backed down.